I can handle the age gap. They’re our neighbours, after all.’
‘I suppose you fancy Liberty too?’ Hazel said.
‘I haven’t seen her. Is she pretty?’
Hazel shrugged. ‘Ask George.’ George Fawn had formed part of a threesome with them when they were younger, though they saw less of him now. ‘She’s thin – long legs – tight jeans. She has this don’t-care attitude, like she’s way above anyone else. Probably ’cos they come from London. London people always think they’re so cool.’
‘Maybe you’ll live in London one day,’ Nathan remarked.
‘You might; I won’t. I’m not clever enough.’
‘You don’t have to be clever—’
‘You know what I mean!’ Hazel flashed. ‘To live in London you need a good job, and to get a good job you need to pass exams, and everyone knows I’m going to eff up my GCSEs. So don’t talk to me about living in London, okay?’
‘I thought Uncle Barty was helping you with school work and … stuff?’
‘Sometimes,’ Hazel said. ‘When I can be bothered.’
‘Bother!’ Nathan gave her a dig with his foot, almost a kick. Best friend’s privilege. He didn’t say: Do you want to be stupid? because he knew that in a way she did, being stupid was her protest in the face of the world, her little rebellion against education and convention, her insurance against any expectations he or others might have of her. I’ll do nothing, I’ll go nowhere, I’ll be no one. I’m stupid. That’s that. He wanted to tell her it was childish but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. ‘What about the witching?’ he asked. ‘Have you done any of that?’
She hunched a shoulder, tugging her hair over her face in a gesture she had still to outgrow. ‘You know I don’t like it.’
‘You tried it yourself last year,’ he pointed out, brutally. ‘You made a complete mess of it, too. Ellen Carver nearly got killed and so did I. Uncle Barty said—’
‘All right, all right, I’m learning it.’ She pushed her hair back again, and some of the sullenness left her face. ‘He taught me how to make the spellfire the other night.’
‘Wow … What did you see?’
‘Smoke,’ Hazel said.
‘Just smoke?’
‘Pictures,’ Hazel conceded. ‘Smoke-pictures. The past, the future – it’s all mixed up and you can’t tell which is which, and Uncle Barty says there are so many possible futures, you don’t know if any of it’s true, so what’s the point of looking? Magic is all shadows and lies: you can’t trust it. Anyway, I saw scenes from your life, not mine – the Grail, and some kind of sacrifice, and people from another world.’
‘Our lives run together,’ Nathan said. ‘But … you’re not supposed to see other worlds in the smoke. The magic can’t look beyond the Gate. Uncle Barty’s always told me that. Are you sure—?’
‘I’m not sure of anything,’ Hazel said irritably, ‘except that I’m hungry.’ They were in her bedroom, and her private store of crisps had run out. ‘D’you think your mum would have anything to eat?’
They went round to Annie’s, and although Nathan pressed her, Hazel wouldn’t be any more specific about what she’d seen.
Annie supplied them with cereal bars (‘I don’t like those,’ Hazel muttered. ‘They’re too healthy.’) and the information that the Rayburns were having a Christmas party the following month, holding open house for anyone from the village.
‘They’re not the Rayburns,’ Hazel said, nitpicking. ‘I told Nathan, the two little ones are Macaires, and the husband’s something else too. Coleman, I think.’
‘Donny Collier,’ Annie said. ‘Boyfriend or husband. Let’s keep it simple – just call them the Rayburns. Go with the majority. Anyway, it looks like they’re planning a pretty lavish do. At least half the village disapproves of them, but I bet they’ll all go.’
Hazel was surprised into a laugh.
‘Stay for dinner,’ Annie went on. ‘It’s cauliflower cheese.’
‘That’s healthy too,’ Hazel quibbled.
‘Are you sure there’s enough?’ Nathan said. ‘I’m not going short – that’s my favourite.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said Hazel.
Annie allowed herself a secret smile.
Once in a while Bartlemy had visitors not from the village, strangers whom few saw come or go and fewer still remembered. The man who hurried through the November dusk that year was one such, a tall, stooping figure as thin as a scarecrow, in a voluminous coat and hood that had seen better days, probably two or three centuries ago. Under the hood he had wispy hair and a wispy beard and a face criss-crossed with so many lines there was barely room for them all, but his eyes amidst all their wrinkles were very bright, and green as spring. A dog accompanied him, a wild-looking dog like a great she-wolf, who trotted at his heel and stopped when he stopped, without collar or lead or word of command. She never barked or panted, following him as silently as his own shadow. The man came striding along the lane through the woods on that chill winter’s evening, too late to have got off a local bus, too far from the train, and the dead leaves stirred behind him, as if something waked and watched.
There was a patter of pursuing feet on the empty road. Neither man nor dog looked back, though the hackles rose on the beast’s nape and her ears lay flat against her skull. When Bartlemy opened the door, the visitor said: ‘They are out there. I fear I am not welcome.’
‘You’re always welcome here,’ Bartlemy said, ‘though I could wish you would change that coat.’
‘It has travelled far with me,’ the visitor retorted. ‘It smells of the open road and open sky.’
‘Not quite how I would have put it,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Take it off for once and sit down.’
‘I expect,’ said the visitor, ‘you were just making tea.’
‘I am always just making tea,’ Bartlemy admitted.
In the living room, the two dogs surveyed each other, acknowledging past acquaintance, exchanged a sniff, and lay down on opposite sides of the fire. The wolf-like dog was big, with a wolf’s elegance and poise, but Hoover was bigger, shaggier, shambling, somehow more doggy. They both knew she would have deferred to him if he had made an issue of it, so he didn’t.
‘What brings you to my quiet corner of the world?’ Bartlemy inquired over the tea-tray.
‘I heard it was not so quiet of late,’ said the stranger.
‘You heard … from whom?’
‘I am not too much an outcast to read the newspapers,’ the man said. ‘There was the reappearance of the Grimthorn Grail – a few murders – an arrest but not, I believe, a complete
